Butch once told me about an amazing project which featured a roaming opera based on Goya’s paintings while he conducted a band of musicians from room to room in an abandoned East Village warehouse.

As it turns out, there’s a video of the performance, called “Goya Time.” The footage below has some rare video of Butch from that era.

David Dann has published a review of the project on his Gems of Jazz blog.

Declaiming actors wandered in and out of the gymnasium where Butch’s musicians were creating a soundscape of melody, poly-rhythms and spiky cacophony. Dancers flitted by, appearing in the doorways one moment, on balconies the next. Interpretations of Goya’s paintings hung on the walls and – if I remember correctly – an artist was on stage painting on a huge canvas and on a naked woman’s body.

It was one whacky scene, and in the midst of it all was Butch and his musicians.

Read the entire post. It also features some priceless photos of a young Butch Morris in L.A. and in the army.

Dann also provides a link to a eulogy written by Butch’s dear friendDon Heffington.

“Some wept openly, and at the end everyone cheered the uncompromised intensity of feeling Henry Threadgill evoked, simultaneously mourning and celebrating a man whose memory sustains artistic ambitions, and whose legacy of Conduction, songs and his tender cornet playing should not be forgotten.”

It’s hard to believe that almost a full year has passed since Butch passed on, but there’s something beautiful in the way his spirit still reverberates through the air, a note that continues to linger.

“I knew at some point I’d find a way, through music, to take my hat off properly to Butch,” Mr. Threadgill said recently at an East Village pastry shop. An invitation to do so came from the Winter Jazzfest, where Mr. Morris memorably performed in 2011, and so Mr. Threadgill set about composing “Old Locks and Irregular Verbs,” a piece that will have its premiere at Judson Church on Jan. 11.

Wayne, who called Butch his only mentor, is conducting his Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, using some of the technique he learned from Butch in the 1980s.

Says Ratliff:

Mr. Morris tended to use very little written music in his conductions, working from scraps. Mr. Horvitz, by contrast, is using his own themes and pre-existing pieces, some riff-based and directly out of the jazz tradition, but blowing them apart, making them judder and flash and fold in on themselves. His is an excellent band of nearly all Seattle residents — the soloists included the trombonist Naomi Siegel, the clarinetist Beth Fleenor and the saxophonists Kate Olson, Craig Flory and Briggan Krauss — and its had an efficacious start. What I heard in Tuesday’s early set was tighter and stronger than a live recording the band was selling at the club, made in Seattle only a few months ago.

Butch will be conducting the Nublu Orchestra in the East Village every Monday night this month as part of Nublu’s 10th anniversary celebration. Two sets every week. Funk like you’ve never heard it before.

Butch will be teaching at this year’s Lisbon Jazz Summer School, between July 16 and 21. It’s a unique opportunity to spend a week with the maestro, learning his technique and exploring music in new ways. Details are at the CCB Lisbon Jazz site for those interested in attending. Deadline for applications is June 30.